Scale mail

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Name	Scale Mail
Size to wear	Small, Medium
Armour Class	6
Encumbrance rating	10
Maximum Enchantment	+6
Grants	nothing
Time to Wear	5

A leather suit covered with metal plates attached to each other in overlapping rows to provide full protection, but at the cost of reduced freedom of movement.

Scale mail is a medium body armour, providing moderate physical defense coupled with a significant encumbrance rating.

Desirability

Scale mail is a medium-weight armour, offering moderate defense, but at a significant cost to evasion and spellcasting success. Early on, high-strength characters may be grateful to find a suit of scale mail on the first few floors. With strength in the upper teens, many low-level spells should be castable.

However, the stats of a scale mail aren't terribly impressive. Some EV-based melee fighters may like one, but most characters will prefer either lighter or heavier. Still, if found with a solid enchantment rating and ego, or in the form of an excellent randart, scale mail might be worth using for a while.

A plain +0 scale mail is completely outclassed by a set of acid dragon scales.

	Image
Mundane
Magical
Artefact

History

Prior to 0.16, scale mail had an encumbrance rating of 11.